Global Nerdy

“BYOD is here to stay”

By necessity, banks tend to play it conservative when it comes to technology and paranoid when it comes to security, so it’s noteworthy when the American Bankers Association’s online journal runs an article titled BYOD is here to stay. “The genie is out of the bottle,” they write, “the toothpaste is out of the tube, and the practice of bringing your own device to work will not go away.”

The article points out that everyone, whether desirable or not, benefits from BYOD:

• Companies: by avoiding costs to keep their employees fitted with the latest gadgets, while gaining increased productivity in return,
• Employees: by avoiding frustration with having to use less useful company-provided gadgets and instead are able to use the better, faster, and cooler new gadgets, and
• Crooks: especially if, as employees and employers rely on outdated security measures or, worse, forego any security measures at all, they enable data theft, tampering, or destruction.

In spite of the benefit to that last group, the article states: “Still, like it or not, BYOD is no longer—if it ever was—just a fad. It is, or should be, a discrete corporate strategy.”

The article cites a number of analyst reports, including Ovum’s summer 2013 BYOX (“Bring Your Own Anything”) employee study that showed that 68% of employees with smartphones bring them to work, more than 15% do so without IT’s knowledge, and 21% do so even though IT forbids it, and Juniper Research’s estimates of over 1 billion employee-own smartphones and tablets in use in the enterprise by 2018.

BlackBerry, One Year Later

It’s hard to believe that almost year has passed since the launch of the BlackBerry Z10, the Canadian smartphone pioneer’s attempt to play catch-up with iPhone and Android. The Z10 — properly pronounced “zed ten” in Canadian English — debuted in the UK on January 31, 2013, followed by Canada, United Arab Emirates, and India in February, and finally in the U.S. in March. The phone and revamped OS sported some interesting and useful ideas for business users, most notably BlackBerry Balance, a sort of built-in BYOD system that allowed you to keep work and personal data separate. The New York Times’ David Pogue sang its praises in his review, newly hired Global Creative Director Alicia Keys literally sang BlackBerry’s praises, and then-CEO Thorsten Heins proudly declared the Z10 was the first step on BlackBerry’s comeback trail.

We all know what happened next, and the Toronto Star provides a summary including a quick guide to where the key BlackBerry players from 2013 are now in their article, BlackBerry, one year later.

Skip hotel check-in and keys with your smartphone

Add hotels to the list of businesses that mobile technology is revolutionizing. Starwood Hotels are conducting experiments with their Aloft boutique hotels in Manhattan and San Francisco that will soon allow guests will be able to use their smartphones to check in and as their room keys, bypassing the usual need to go to the front desk upon arrival. The Starwood app will allow iPhone 4S and later models or Android phones running version 4.3 or newer to act as keys for their rooms, which will have Bluetooth-equipped locks.

Here’s the Engrish text that appears on the bottle:

iPhone six

[ 2013/03 Establish ]

Deducting striking smoothness and showing healthy quality
Bran-new Series is designed to meet your special hair demands
Rendering professionalism and deducting beauty

My guess is that the text is the output of a Google Translate session.

Almost every guidebook on BYOD looks at the subject from the point of view of management or the IT department. BYOD for You: The Guide to Bring Your Own Device to Work breaks apart from the pack by looking at BYOD from the point of view of the person bringing his or her own device to work. Written by Daniel Lohrmann, Michigan’s Chief Security Officer and Deputy Director for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, BYOD for You is a breezy, 54-page Kindle ebook that provides the perfect introduction to BYOD for end users at organizations that allow the work-related use of personal mobile devices.

You’ll be able to read BYOD for You’s eight chapters, most of which are only a half-dozen pages long, within a couple of lunch breaks. It looks at all sorts of issues that come up in a workplace’s BYOD program, and not just the technological ones, but the social, legal, and ethical as well. Its chapters cover these topics:

1. Categorizing your BYOD environment: Gold, Silver or Bronze?
2. Your workplace’s BYOD program, or the lack thereof
3. Security: How to safely use your mobile device at work and home
4. MDM
5. Privacy and other legal considerations
6. Maximizing the financial benefits of BYOD
7. Ethical dilemmas and proving you deserve your mobile device
8. Building a personalized BYOD plan that outlives your device

Throughout BYOD for You, Lohrmann constantly refers to his “Gold, Silver, and Bronze” levels of BYOD use at businesses:

• Bronze: An organization operating at the Bronze BYOD level has employees who bring their own devices to work, but doesn’t have an official BYOD policy. Mobile policy is ad hoc rather than clearly defined. It’s unclear about what happens when company information security policies and personal devices collide, if employees’ personal data will remain private, or if their work-related activities on personal devices will get them in trouble. Employees also bear all costs of using the device, even for work-related purposes. MDM is practically or completely non-existent.
• Silver: In organizations operating at the Silver BYOD level, there is a basic BYOD policy that spells out how its data can be accessed, as well as issues of security and privacy, and there is tacit permission for employees to access their work email from their devices. Employees can choose between all-expenses-paid COPE devices or BYOD devices without any reimbursement for operating costs. MDM is limited; it’s often something basic, such as the management provided by Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync.
• Gold: At the Gold level of BYOD, there’s a full BYOD policy that specifies the rights, responsibilities of employees who bring personal mobile devices to work, and the procedures and practices they should follow. In a Gold organization, employees are fully reimbursed for all device costs. The company makes use of state-of-the art MDM that is mandatory on all mobile devices used for work purposes.

While BYOD for You was written for end users at a workplace, it’s just as useful a guide for managers or technical decision-makers who are new to the idea of BYOD and want to get a grasp of the major issues that can arise when employees bring their own devices to work. Packed with a lot of good ideas and best practices, It’s an easy read, and at $2.99 from Amazon (you can even borrow it for free if you’re on Amazon Prime), it’s also one of the better one of the better deals you’re going to find.

An Amazon review that gave BYOD for You a four-star rating suggested that “A companion book on what the COMPANY should be doing to manage their employee-owned devices would make a great follow-on to this practical, employee-centric work.” Perhaps we’ll write that book.

Links

• BYOD for You’s page on amazon.com
• The BYOD for You official site

You’ve probably seen Steve Jobs’ January 1984 Cupertino demo of the original Macintosh, which was done in front of Apple’s investors and includes the standard cash-flow analysis and other suit-related bric-a-brac. There was another demo in front of a very different audience on the opposite coast, and it hasn’t been generally available for viewing until now. TIME has posted the video of Steve Jobs’ January 1984 demo at the Boston Computer Society, which was made in front not in front of Apple investors, but in front of computer enthusiasts and the general public:

TIME’s Harry McCracken writes:

People who attended the shareholder meeting saw the more historic presentation — hey, it came first — but what they got was also, in effect, a rehearsal for the later Boston one, which came out more polished. The BCS version was also longer and meatier. After the unveiling, Jobs participated in demos and a Q&A session with members of the Macintosh team: Bill Atkinson, Steve Capps, Owen Densmore, Andy Hertzfeld, Bruce Horn, Rony Sebok, Burrell Smith and Randy Wigginton. (Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, not a Mac team member, crashed the panel and talked about the Apple II line of computers.) Even more than the shareholder meeting, the BCS one was a prototype for the media extravaganzas that we citizens of the 21st century call Stevenotes.

Unlike the Cupertino meeting, which you had to be an Apple shareholder to attend and was aimed primarily at the suits, the Boston gathering was open to the general public and aimed at computer enthusiasts and people who’d be likely to buy a Mac. Even then, you can see Steve’s presentation technique emerging — a technique that he’d refine over the years and use to great effect after his return to Apple in 1997:

• He created a story. Rather than simply dive into the technical specs of the Macintosh, he started his presentation with a story. He introduced an antagonist, IBM, the other dominant computer company of the time, who had a long history and great success, but a vision so blinkered that they blew several opportunities to lead and were perenially playing catch-up. Then he introduced the hero, Apple, the industry’s last, best hope for stopping IBM from completely dominating the computer industry and hobbling it with its lack of foresight. Finally, he shows how the hero will do so: Macintosh.
• He delivered the experience. “People don’t buy drills,” the marketing wisdom goes, “they buy holes.” Steve followed this rule and showed what was possible with the Mac, making sure that software like MacPaint and MacWrite got significant demo time. Remember, it was a command-line world back then, and GUIs were largely unknown to the public, so it was important to give deliver this new experience.
• He rehearsed and rehearsed. If you look at the Cupertino demo and the Boston demo, you’ll see that a lot of Steve’s presentation is the same, and shows that spent a considerable amount of time rehearsing. If you’ve ever suffered through a presentation where the presenter didn’t put in the necessary practice, you’ll appreciate the polish that comes through in a well-rehearsed presentation.

I recommend watching Stevenotes for pointers, as well as reading Carmine Gallo’s book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.

In part one of this series, we looked at predictions for the mobile world for 2014 by CNet (competition is coming), Network World (change is coming, and it’s terrible!), Ericsson Consumer Labs (change is coming, and it’s awesome!), and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt (big data will be the big disruption). Here’s a roundup of more predictions made by tech news outlets for what smartphones, tablets and other mobile technologies will bring this year.

As we said in the previous installment, the true value isn’t in the predictions, but in the way they let us see what people who are either in the mobile industry or who follow it closely are thinking.

ReadWrite: “In 2014, the mobile web will die — and other mobile predictions”

We’re a bit creeped out by a set of predictions that uses the phrase “will die” not once, but twice. ReadWrite’s predictions are all based around mobile devices: what to expect from mobile vendors, and how we’ll perceive and use their wares.

• The “mobile web” — that is, those less-capable, watered-down versions of websites that our mobile devices get redirected to —will die, thanks to mobile browser improvements. Also, the trend towards responsive design, in which a site’s content automatically adjusts itself to work with the size of the screen on the device it’s being viewed with, will continue to grow.
• After so many predictions of an Apple TV set, ReadWrite have decided to stop giving that rumor life.
• However, they believe that the rumored Apple iWatch will be released in the spring and function as a peripheral device for your iPhone or iPad. They believe that coupled with the iPhone 5S and its M7 motion coprocessor, it’ll be a big hit for fitness and “quantified self” buffs.
• They also believe that Samsung’s lead in smartphones will decline, based on the sales of the Galaxy S4 being only as good as those for its predecessor, the Galaxy S III, the many half-baked features that the S4 has, and their poor, gimmicky software. This may create an opportunity on which other Android vendors may be able to capitalize.
• With better mobile browsers will come more HTML5-compliant sites, which means that more websites will provide the functionality and interactivity that the latest version of HTML makes possible.
• Google Glass was made available only to a select few early adopters last year; this year, ReadWrite expects that them masses will be able to get their paws on it for a retail price of US$299.
• Android will go 64-bit this year, which isn’t much of a surprise as iOS went 64-bit last year. The move to 64-bit means being able to use more than 4GB of RAM, and being able to perform even more computationally-intensive tasks.
• Just as the concept of “multimedia” — the ability to present users with text, pictures, audio, and video — went from a capability that only a few computers had to something we expect from even the cheapest of netbooks, as well as mobile devices, the concept of “mobile” will eventually vanish. After a while, we’ll end up just thinking of smartphones, tablets, and wearables as just another way to make use of processing and networking power, but in forms that aren’t as tied to the desk as desktop and laptop computers are. ReadWrite says it’ll happen in 2014; we think it’ll take longer.

Read ReadWrite’s predictions

Netbiscuits’ 2014 trend predictions for the mobile web

Creative Commons photo by Esther Vargas. Click to see the source.

Netbiscuits bill themselves as a builder of “software solutions for adaptive mobile web experiences used by brands worldwide”, which clients like PayPal, BMW, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Viacom, AT&T, and so on. They host over 300,000 mobile web applications that major brands use to interact with their customers, and naturally, their predictions are about the use of mobile technology to grow a customer base. Their predictions come in the form of an infographic.

• Noting the trends in emerging markets, Netbiscuits predict a shift in expectations as more people worldwide will be in a position to acquire their first smartphone. For these people, mobile devices may be their primary (and perhaps even their first) way to access the internet.
• Web applications will have to be more context-sensitive, adjusting themselves to the screen size and device with which they’re being accessed.
• They predict that customers’ lives will be run on mobile, with people fearing not being connected due to low battery power, being out of signal range, or losing their device. In order to stay connected, mobile devices will be augmented with the use of wearables.
• Poor experiences will be punished by customers: this is business 101, but with so many apps and services vying for consumer attention, it’s a buyer’s market, and only those apps and services that provide a consistently good experience will thrive.
• They predict that analytics will be indispensable as customers expect mobile apps and services to customize themselves to meet user needs.

Read Netbiscuits’ predictions

TechSpot’s 10 mobile tech predictions for 2014

Netbiscuits were concerned with mobile software in their 2014 predictions, while TechSpot is all about mobile hardware. Their predictions cover mobile devices and their underlying technology.

• While it’s not clear what advantages a curved display gives to a smartphone (perhaps it’s a better fit to one’s face), it’s a way for a vendor to differentiate their devices. We call these sorts of things “feature spam”, although some consumers may go for it. Expect more phones with large curved OLED displays in the same vein as the Samsung Galaxy Round and the LG Flex.
• Like ReadWrite, TechSpot predict a move towards 64-bit mobile devices. They do note that while iOS is 64-bit ready, much of the libraries that make up Android aren’t, and they expect the Android transition to 64-bit to be slow. Given the relative pokiness with which Android user upgrade operating systems, we expect to see even more Android fragmentation, but now with a 32/64 bit divide along with the fragmentation coming from all those Android versions and skins in use.
• One area in which Nokia’s Lumia series of Windows Phone devices stand out is with their excellent cameras, especially the Lumia 1020’s 41-megapixel sensor. Expect to see other mobile devices race to catch up with this very impressive spec.
• 1080p displays on smartphones already look like paper, but TechSpot have observed that Samsung, LG, and other vendors are working on 1440p displays for smartphones. They predict that many vendors will start showcasing smartphone displays better than 1080p. As they put it: “We’re hesitant to say that including a display on a phone with a resolution beyond 1080p won’t provide any benefits, after many people said the same going from 720p to 1080p.”
• They predict that Windows RT will see even less interest. It makes sense: with Windows 8 and the upcoming Windows 9 being able to run on tablets for just a little more money, why wouldn’t you go with the OS that runs the less-loved “Windows Store” apps and Windows Desktop apps too?
• This one’s so obvious that it barely qualifies as a prediction: LTE everywhere.
• As mobile devices become gaming platforms themselves, Techspot predict that graphics chips on mobile devices will reach console quality this year. The term “console quality” is a bit vague, but perhaps it’s best understood as “providing graphics as least as good as the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, if not better”.
• This may be a byproduct of the current economic situation or emerging markets picking up on smartphones and tablets, but they expect that mobile device vendors will continue to address the price-sensitive market and offer less expensive phones.
• Battery technology development is slow work, and it’s expected that we’ll have to make do with our current lithium-ion batteries as no new battery tech is expected this year.
• Techspot predict that more mobile operating systems — most or all of them some kind of Linux derivative — will appear this year. They also predict that these newcomers will not see much success as Android and iOS battle to entrench themselves while Windows Phone, now free of any threat from BlackBerry, looks to solidify its distant-third-place position.

Read Techspot’s predictions

CIO’s 10 mobile tech predictions for 2014

We’ve saved the best-pedigreed predictions for last: CIO’s, which were put together by talking to industry analysts and mobile industry C-level executives. As we said earlier, the true value in these predictions isn’t their accuracy, but the way they let us see what’s top of mind with the people who influence our industry.

• CIO predicts that smartphone and tablet sales will outpace PC sales, citing the IDC figures stating that they expect to see smartphone and tablet sales dwarf PC sales by 250% and PC spending drop 6% this year. Factors driving this include the fact the current mobile device development cycle sees vends putting out a new flagship device every 12 to 18 months, and the fact that for most purposes (and especially general office work), PCs have been on a “good enough” plateau for the past half-dozen years.
• They predict that the Android/iOS battle will continue this year, with iOS maintaining a 2-to-1 value per unit advantage over Android, while Android will continue with a 3-to-1 device volume presence advantage over iOS. Windows Phone will have to increase developer interest “by 50 to 100 percent” in order to remain a contender.
• They predict that the amount of video viewing that people do on mobile devices will match that on PCs for the first time, and start to rival viewing on TVs and DVRs. Expect video to comprise the lion’s share of mobile bandwidth starting this year.
• Just as PoS (point-of-sale) machines underwent a transformation from cash registers to PCs, they’re now undergoing a similar transformation from PCs to mobile devices. While there are a number of vendors who build mobile device-based PoS systems, IDC predicts that 2014 will be a year of consolidation, as the market matures and makes the transition of one with many players trying to stake their claim, to a smaller number of larger, more stable vendors.
• CIO cites research from electronic payments firm ACI Worldwide, who say that banks will start truly embracing mobile technology, with providing updates not just to mobile devices but wearables, mobile person-to-person payments, and offering “mobile-only experiences” to their customers.
• We think that this is a bit premature, but CA Technologies CTO John Michelsen says that tablets will usher in “the true death of the PC” this year. Michelsen says that this is the year that CIOs and IT will start developing enterprise apps for mobile first, and then adapt them for the desktop…”when necessary”. We may not agree on the timing, but we agree with the metric: the true death of the PC will have taken place when mobile development is the norm and desktop development is the afterthought.
• This prediction is so different from the prevailing wisdom that we couldn’t help but notice it: that SMS will steal the spotlight from apps in 2014. This comes from Steve French, OpenMarket’s VP of Product Management, who says that this app craze will blow over and that “more enterprises in 2014 will increase usage of SMS, especially given consumer and employee familiarity with it.” By that logic, even more people are familiar with telephone voice communication, and that voice should be the big comeback kid, not SMS.
• CIO quotes Stoke’s CEO Vikash Varma in their prediction that LTE security will improve this year, as a response to “more intense cybercrime focus on mobile networks and a rising incidence of hack, such as eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks and packet insertion.”
• They predict the integration of wearables, gamification and mobile payments, which makes sense: the combination of “always on” (in more ways that one), painless payments, and fun makes for a pretty “frictionless” way to extract money from people’s wallets.
• 2014 is the year that mobile and digital currencies go mainstream, with more checkout counters accepting PayPal and Bitcoin, and ubiquitous mobile devices paving the way for digital currency.

Read CIO’s predictions

How’s Windows Phone doing? It depends on which numbers you look at. On one hand, a recent report from Forbes says that the Q3 2013 numbers look promising. On the other hand, TechCrunch is reporting that Nokia, who account for 93% of Windows Phone sales, reported a drop in sales during 2013’s Q4 period, the holiday buying time when a drop in sales suggests that something’s gone wrong.

The good numbers

Map by Yours Truly, built upon Yoel Natan’s map. Click the map to see it at full size.

One of the good numbers that Windows Phone can boast is that there are 24 countries where Windows Phone outsells the iPhone. They’re pointed out in the map above and listed in alphabetical order below, along with their World Bank GDP ranking based on figures from 1990 to 2012 (out of 190 countries):

Country	GDP rank	Notes
Chile	36	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Colombia	30
Czech Republic	50	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Egypt	39	A “Next Eleven” country
Ecuador	62
Finland	41	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Greece	42	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Hungary	57	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
India	10	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Italy	9	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Kenya	86
Kuwait	55
Malaysia	34	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Mexico	14	A MINT and “Next Eleven” country Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Nigeria	37	A MINT and “Next Eleven” country
Pakistan	43	A “Next Eleven” country
Peru	49
Poland	24	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Saudi Arabia	19
South Africa	28	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Thailand	31	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
Ukraine	51	Windows Phone is in 2nd place here
United Arab Emirates	32
Vietnam	56	A “Next Eleven” country Windows Phone is in 2nd place here

 

The Forbes article says that if you don’t count Italy and Finland, Windows Phones outsell iPhones in “poorer nations” where Apple’s prices are prohibitively expensive. It would appear that in Forbes’ estimation, with its current financial woes, Greece is now a “poorer nation”, lumped in the same basket as Kenya.

It should be noted that nearly a quarter of these “poorer countries” have been designated up-and-comers by the financial industry, either as MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey, a designation popularized by Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill, who coined BRIC) or “Next Eleven” (another term created by O’Neill). The MINT and “Next Eleven” countries are seen by economists as having a high potential of becoming the world’s largest economies in the 21st century, with promising outlooks for growth and future investment. They were selected based on criteria such as economic stability, quality of education, open trade and investment policies, and political maturity and stability. In other words, they’ll play a larger role in the way the world works in the days to come, and they’ll definitely influence technology. These countries will be the next marketplace battleground for mobile vendors, and right now, it’s anyone’s to win.

Windows Phone shipments (Forbes reports it as sales, but the IDC report says shipments) grew 156% from Q3 2012 to Q3 2013. That rate is three times Android’s and six times iOS’ growth in the same period. Nokia — and once the acquisition is formalized, Microsoft — owns the vast majority of these sales: 93.2%, and most of these were for low-end models like the Lumia 520 and 521.

The bad numbers

Graph by The Verge. Click to see the source.

Nokia Lumia’s fortunes are Windows Phone’s fortunes, what with Nokia accounting for nearly 95% of Windows Phone sales. Nokia Lumia sales have been climbing steadily from Q3 2012’s nearly 3 million to 8.8 million in Q3 2013; sales have doubled from 2012 to 2013.

Strangely, sales fell by .6 million during the holiday quarter of Q4 2013, a period when they should go up. We’ll see over the next couple of quarters whether this is a momentary hiccup or the start of a general downward trend (BGR calls it a “collapse”, but I think it’s too soon to tell). These slightly disappointing numbers will be the last ones that Nokia’s phone division will do so as a part of Nokia; next time, they’ll be doing so as a department of Microsoft.

Graph by Opera. Click to see the source.

Another set of bad number for Windows Phone is its poor mobile ad revenue numbers, which are even worse than Symbian’s and BlackBerry’s. BGR points to Opera’s (the browser company) Q2 2013 State of Mobile Advertising report, which says that Windows Phone accounted for just over a quarter of a percent of mobile advertising in 2013’s second quarter; it accounted for 0.35% of ad revenues generated on Opera’s 425 million user, 60 billion impressions/month mobile ad network.

This is bad news for the Windows Phone platform, as many developers make money by giving away their apps for free and using in-app ads to generate revenue. This may be keeping developers away, which in turn keeps apps away, and the availability of apps is a factor in people’s smartphone purchase decisions.

The weird numbers

Now that we’re at the start of 2014, it’s time to look again at some old predictions on where Windows Phone will in 2015, which is now just a year away. Here’s Gartner’s, in which they predicted that by 2015, Windows Phone will be the number two mobile OS, with just under 20% of the market:

Here’s IDC’s prediction for 2015. Like Gartner, they predicted that Windows Phone would be the number two operating system, but they said that it would have just over 20% of the market. I’d point to their report, but they’ve since taken it down (here’s a BGR article that quotes it):

And finally, here’s the most way-out-there prediction: the forecast by Pyramid Research. In May 2011, they predicted that Windows Phone would “establish its leadership in 2015”:

As a point of comparison, here are StatCounter’s mobile OS stats as of this writing:

Click the graph to see the source.

It’s a good reminder to always temper any analyst predictions you read with some common sense.

It’s been a long-standing tradition in the tech press to make predictions for the next 12 months at the start of a new year, and they’re not about to break with tradition. We decided to do a roundup of predictions for the world of mobile tech made by some of the big tech news outlets and technology vendors, with our summary and take on what they think will happen this year. This is the first of two parts, and we make no guarantees as to whether or not they’ll come true. Rather, we feel that they’re valuable not for their accuracy, but as a source of insight into their thinking.

CNET’s Top 10 Predictions for the Mobile Market in 2014

CNET’s focus is on technology and consumer electronics news, so it’s no surprise that their predictions are about just two topics: the wireless carriers, and mobile device vendors. The one unifying theme of their 2014 predictions is that the vendors, whether for wireless service, smartphones, or tablets, will be competing even harder for your dollar.

• Carriers will pay more attention to the “value segment” of the market and offer more pricing options, especially for the budget-sensitive.
• They’ll also lobby hard in Washington in anticipation of the upcoming auction for pieces of the AWS-3 spectrum, a range of frequencies formerly used by the Department of Defense, but now freed up for commercial mobile services. Simply put, access to mor frequencies means more data carrying capacity, and that’s something carriers will fight tooth and nail for.
• More carrier mergers and acquisitions, or at least attempts at them.
• T-Mobile will continue following their “uncarrier” strategy: eliminating contracts for personal accounts and roaming charges for more than 100 countries, removing device subsidies, letting people upgrade early, and giving away free data. It doesn’t hurt that their CEO, John Legere, has become a bit of a hero of the little people, what with trash-talking about the competition and gate-crashing their parties.
• Sprint emerges stronger from its rebuilding year, after going through a painful, but necessary process of replacing old infrastructure and getting LTE set up.
• Things will get worse at BlackBerry before they get better. They’ve got defecting customers and a tarnished image, but they’ll also come out with new devices for emerging markets (built by Foxconn) and a new focus on the enterprise.
• Microsoft will kill the Lumia brand and simply sell devices with the now-absorbed Nokia’s design and mobile knowhow.
• Apple and Samsung will continue duking it out in the courts.
• Unlocked phones will become mainstream, what with plans that encourage customers to take their phones with them as they switch carriers and notifying customers when their devices are eligible to be unlocked.
• LG up, HTC down. LG will reemerge as the hot Android device maker, after having built two excellent Nexus devices for Google, receiving critical (if not yet commercial) praise for the G2, and their general good performance in the home electronic markets. At the same time, HTC, despite having made the excellent HTC One, is facing difficulties and doesn’t have the size or reserves to endure a long down period.

Read CNet’s predictions

Network World’s 12 Big BYOD Predictions for 2014

If you had to sum up Network World’s predictions for BYOD in a single sentence, it’s “Change is coming, and it’s going to be a pain in the corporate hindquarters.”

• COPE (Company-Owned, Personally-Enabled) devices will become more popular. Employees don’t really want to foot the bill for devices that they use at least partially for work, and the COPE model allows for both more complete device control and personal use.
• BYOD will go beyond just smartphones, but extend to tablets and even laptops as employees, particularly millennials, prefer to choose and customize their own devices. Forrester analyst David Johnson observed the trend in 2013, and expects it to continue into 2014.
• They predict a “BYOD security bombshell” for 2014, as malicious parties will find it too tempting a target with too many opportunities for exploitation. BYOD’s become big enough, yet is still to new to have fully-formed security tools and techniques.
• They also predict the end of stipends, even though they cite Forrester analyst David Johnson saying that they’ll increase. Network World says they’ll disappear because it’s an employer’s market right now, and companies have no incentive to provide many perks, while Johnson says that if BYOD expands to include tablets and laptops, stipends will grow to cover them.
• After a couple of years from evolving from gatekeeper to enabler, IT will spend 2014 shoring  up networks and systems to make them secure for BYOD.
• It’s expected that IT departments will attempt to assert control over BYOD, leading users to revolt. This shouldn’t be surprising, as mobile devices (and back in the 1980s, the PC) were first brought in by “rogue workers” who felt IT moved too slowly.
• A Microsoft tablet turnaround: according to a Forrester survey, while the iPad was the most-used tablet, when asked about BYOD tablet plans for 2014, Windows 8-based tablets were the most popular. We’ll have to see whether the actual outcome matches what the survey participants said.
• Mandatory BYOD gained momentum in 2013, and this led Gartner to predict that by 2017, half of businesses will require employees to provide their own phones for work. Network World expects that Gartner’s prediction will come true, and 2014 will see more companies requiring BYOD phones as a condition of employment.
• There will be even more competition in the MDM market, as more companies get into a market that grows more lucrative with the increasing adoption of BYOD.
• They predict the end of legacy apps, which rely on old browsers (especially IE 6 and 7), or are behind firewalls, or are dependent on desktop clients. As employees use mobile devices more and more, companies will move to SaaS (Software as a Service) to ensure that their applications can be accessed any time, anywhere.
• While companies have been working to make their applications accessible to mobile devices, not every bit of legacy software can be ported over. For these applications, virtual desktops are a good workaround, and Network World predicts that BYOD and the general use of mobile devices will give virtual desktops a new lease on life.
• “Wearables wreak havoc” is the way Network World phrases Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder’s prediction that wearable computing devices — smartwatches and the like — will take the enterprise by storm. It would seem that their attitude is “We’re still dealing with your mobile devices and you want us to take on something else too?”, and it’s quite possible that a lot of IT departments feel the same way. If that’s so, then the “rogue worker” prediction above will definitely come true.

Read Network World’s predictions

Ericsson Consumer Lab’s 10 hot consumer trends for 2014

The consumer lab division of Ericsson, who used to make mobile devices with Sony until 2012 (they still build the underlying technologies), prepared a booklet on their predictions for the hot consumer trends of 2014 for mobile technologies. Not only has a focus opposite that of Network World — consumer, rather than enterprise, but so is their more positive outlook. They do agree with Network World on one issue, however: change is coming.

• Just as PCs at work and home reached a large enough number to change the way we work, live and play, mobile devices will hit a number large enough to change everyday life and drive demand for a new set of services enabled by mobility. A number of areas of life, including shopping, restaurants, leisure facilities child/elderly care, communication with authorities and traffic, will be changed by offering services via mobile devices.
• “Your body is the new password,” says Ericsson’s report, referring to the increasing use of biometric data, such as fingerprints, as passwords. Using fingerprints as passwords solves a few problems, but it introduces a whole new set, which we’ll cover in a later article. For now, let’s just say that there are reasons why security experts cringe whenever someone says they’ve solved the password problem with biometrics.
• The concept of “the quantified self” — the constant measurement of ourselves with technology — will become more popular. Thanks to GPS, smartphones can function as pedometers, apps that use a mobile device’s camera and wearable peripherals like the FitBit can track heart rate, and scales and other health devices like those made by Withings can send their readouts to mobile devices and computers. Mobile devices make it easier and more convenient to have a better gauge on our health, and such uses will become more prevalent.
• People will expect not just internet access everywhere, but a good connection as well.
• Thanks to smartphones, which are less expensive than full-blown PCs, the “digital divide” will be reduced, with more people worldwide having internet access. In developing countries, smartphones are often the primary internet device for most users.
• In spite of the various privacy and security issues (including the recent breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus), most people will still feel that the benefits of going online will outweigh those concerns. Rather than avoid making use of online services entirely, Ericsson’s Consumer Lab reports that 93% of the people they surveyed would rather be cautious and follow a “risk mitigation strategy”.
• Social networks will play a greater role in determining what people watch online, and much of those recommendations will be driven by influencers. According to Ericsson, 38% of the people they surveyed watched videos recommended by their friends several times a week, but only 22% recommended videos to friends several times a week.
• People will want to know how much mobile data they’re using, to better manage their mobile devices and mobile spending. 37% of smartphone owners use apps to test their connection speed, and 48% use apps to measure their data consumption.
• Sensors everywhere: with more interactive services will come the demand for our surroundings to become just as responsive through sensor-based services such as doors and  gates that recognize you and automatically unlock (we’ve had this on newer cars for some time now). There are privacy concerns: more than a quarter of smartphone owners were uncomfortable with the idea of store sensors that made recommendations based on purchases by people with similar profiles.
• More people will “time and space shift”, that is, watch a video in one place on one device, pause it, and then continue watching the video where they left off in a different place, and possibly on a different device.

Download Ericsson Consumer Lab’s report [1MB PDF]

Eric Schmidt’s 2014 predictions

Google’s executive chairman says “the trend has been that mobile is winning; it’s now won”. He’s certain that big data and machine intelligence — and its availability through mobile devices — will be a big disruption. He also talks about Google’s biggest mistake: missing the rise and importance of social media.

In the Next Installment…

…we’ll cover ReadWrite’s and Netbiscuits’ predictions for the mobile web, as well as Techspot’s and CIO’s forecasts for mobile technology.